


Tender Visions

by edwynTumbleweed



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Death, Feel-good, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:21:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28708854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edwynTumbleweed/pseuds/edwynTumbleweed
Summary: A story told through various meetings and partings as Thanatos struggles to hold onto Zagreus and sort through his feelings before he escapes.
Relationships: Thanatos & Zagreus (Hades Video Game), Thanatos/Zagreus (Hades Video Game)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 86





	Tender Visions

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize in advance for all of the misused grammar and spelling errors.  
> I had to put in all in one chapter because I knew I'd never finish it if I broke it up, and personally I also like reading single chapter works.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it--I don't really write fanfiction, but I just couldn't leave these two alone.

Part 1:

The first time Zagreus reaches him it’s a distraction.

He knew the prince would reach him on his reckless ascent eventually. For a place with so many dead, news in the underworld traveled fast. With few gods and sentient shades occupying the bleak realm, equally bleak conversation passed the lack of time, and actions of the prince were especially quick to spread. But, a small part of him had hoped the prince would’ve come to him sooner with his decision, or just not at all.

Thanatos huffs out a small sigh as the prince stumbles, loud and bright as ever, into his chamber.

Zagreus enters and shakes the drops of blood from his inky locks—a habit he picked up from Cerberus long ago. Thanatos can’t help but cease whatever it was he was even doing and watch Zagreus pause and glance around the chamber before his mismatches eyes fall on Thanatos and flash recognition. The corners of his mouth lift as he strides confidently to him.

“Long time no see Than,” Zagreus’ mouth quirks up further at one side, and his velvety voice sends an odd shiver through Thanatos, _has it really been that long since I last heard it?_

Thanatos studies him further for a moment, his ashen skin dancing with a foreign electricity that runs all the way through to the tips of his unruly hair and an unnaturally hungry green hue emitting from his left eye.

_So it’s true, the gods really have been helping him…_

He sighs again, “Yes, indeed.” Thanatos’s tone is even and monotone, he never considered as a child how thankful he would be for his numb constitution; but it has served him well both in his line of work and now.

“I trust Hypnos and Meg have told you then.” The playfulness has drained from Zagreus’s voice, and he fixes Thanatos further in place with his suddenly firm and dedicated face. “I was wondering when I would run into you up here, down here? Wherever we are.”

“Yes… I had business on the surface that took quite some time” _Business I should be getting back to…_ he thinks to himself. As much as Thanatos truly does have work to be done, he knows that’s not the only force that kept him away. Being in Zagreus’s presence, even just this short while now, is draining, and the god of death is ill equipped to sort through the slight twisting he feels in his core when he looks at the prince.

So he simply pushes it off, adverts his gaze and makes his own suggestion, “If I’ve truly been gone so long then why don’t we play a game to catch up? You’re good at games.” _Anything to get him out of here quickly…_

Zagreus brightens again at that suggestion, curved smile returning to his conflicting, and yet harmonious, features. “With you? Always.” Thanatos’s eyes shoot back to his, and he’s feels pierced and guilty. _He’s so, so bright._ “What are the rules, Than?” Zagreus asks, not noticing Thanatos’s small struggle.

“We’ll keep it simple.” He lies. And they play.

Part 2:

The second time Zagreus finds him it’s confusing.

He had decided to stop actively avoiding the prince, (after he finally admitted to himself that he was avoiding him) but their path’s simply didn’t cross, and Thanatos would never personally seek him out. It simply seemed no matter where the god of death was called to, Zagreus was nowhere to be found.

So when Zagreus enters his current chamber, a sudden burst of color and sound, Thanatos couldn’t help but feel a slight irrational warmth sweep through him and shake his concentration.

“Than!” Zagreus calls out, grin already wide on his face, posture proud and masking the angry red marks and lingering injuries from his pervious trails “Was hoping I’d run into you around here soon. I think you owe me a rematch for last time. What do you say, up for the challenge?”

It’s at times like this that Thanatos wonders where the prince really came from.

Sure he knows, better than anyone, who Zagreus is. He remembers firsthand the small prince following Nyx around the great halls of his father’s house, the endless night of his childhood growing up beside the boy in those decaying halls. Remembers watching the prince argue with Hades time and time again—sparse angry words never agreeing, the years he spent trying to make himself scarce while Zagreus practically twirled around Meg, seeing the great hound Cerberus softening day by day under his care and attention, observing the way his once shallow shoulders filled out, his childish legs lengthened, his face thinned away into the sharp and severely beautiful features in the pale ash skin of his father, the way he slowly grew stronger and brighter almost in spite of the darkness around them.

But the strange willpower, the energy, and _color_ within Zagreus, Thanatos had no explanation for that. It seemed to grow out from something deep inside of the prince’s core. _But where did that core come from?_ In a land of darkness, full of dark and depressed beings where the brightest thing in sight was the blood red river Styx, where did this boy of gold-tipped laurels and a single green eye come from? What was the origin of the vivacity that Zagreus always held? And why was Thanatos so drawn to it?

Thanatos’s eyes soften as the prince approaches and stops before him, he’s about to offer his response when something on Zagreus glints in his sensitive eyes. It’s an earring. It’s _Meg’s_ earring. Hanging down delicately in blue and pink from beneath Zagreus’ dark hair.

The softness in his eyes fades and he takes a deep, unnecessary, breath to calm the illogical flare of jealousy. “Yes, I would not want to disappoint the son of my employer.” He utters, deceptively calm as always.

Zagreus raises a single dark eyebrow at that, “You can’t be serious Thanatos, as if father would have you ever look after me, or even approve of any of this. Actually, he’s made it quite clear he doesn’t. Furthermore, I hope our friendship is beyond simple work-relation alliances.”

The honest and candid words of the prince disperse any lingering irritation Thanatos felt. _Beyond Friendship? If only he knew._ He swallows down those thoughts, and brushes a few errant white strands from his face, “Right, of course. Well then, what are you waiting for Zag? A written invitation?”

Ø Ø Ø Ø

Zagreus, grinning and flushed from the fight, huffs out a breath, “Well, it’s been good Than, but I really should be moving on now. Can’t stick around with you all eternal evening, I’ve got places to go and you’ve got people to kill.”

“Right, then before you and I go, please take this” Thanatos responds, not quite up to correcting Zagreus about the fact that he doesn’t actually “kill” anyone. He relinquishes the still-beating centaur heart from his robes and waits patiently for the prince to take it and go. But after accepting the bloody heart into his body with a pulsing shiver, Zagreus turns back to him.

“Thanks Than. I, also have something for you.” Thanatos’s eyebrows shoot up at Zagreus’s words and he watches the prince pull and present a small glass bottle of golden liquid from his red sash, “It’s just something I picked up on my way here in Tartarus, and it reminded me of you.” He places the bottle into the shocked silent and cold hands of Thanatos, almost shyly, but the god of death is much too surprised to notice the specifics. “Got the heart, and on we go—"

“—Wait!” Thanatos quickly jolts. Zagreus halts in his steps towards the next stone passage and turns back to Thanatos, charcoal eyebrow just slightly arched above his burning crimson and black eye. Thanatos knows a gift such as this requires something in return. _But what could he, a god of death, offer to someone trying to live?_

He never felt the need for material possessions much at all, having come to terms with the temporary nature of all things long ago. He wants to help Zagreus, no matter how much it hurt to hear from his brother about the prince’s escape attempts (something the god of sleep thought was terribly hilarious but had quite the opposite effect on his brother). Maybe that’s why he was so cold to Zagreus these last couple encounters. A small part of Thanatos always knew the prince never fully belonged here, not like he does.

When the news of Zagreus’s escapades did reach him, and he fled to the surface he found solace and comfort in the death he brought to the land above, as if all the spirits he condemned to the underworld could weigh Zagreus down with them. Not a single one of them worthy of a prince.

But, he did pick up something… different while he was up there. “I would like to help you Zag. This one’s on me” he says evenly, pressing the small, delicately pinned butterfly into the prince’s lingering hand.

Zagreus accepts the enchanted gift, turning the delicate purple wings over in his hands once so gently it almost hurts to watch, then grins up at him, “You’re too kind” and in a couple red flashes is gone.

And suddenly Thanatos is alone again. Hovering in the green-blue glowing fields of Elysium, so cold and hollow now without the brightness of Zagreus. He casts his eyes down from the dreary room to slowly reexamine his gift.

 _Reminds him, of me?_ He wonders to himself, turning the fine glass over in his hands. The gold liquid swirls within it as he studies it. Thanatos has of course heard of nectar before, but never had any need to seek it out, nor was offered any, until now.

Yet, all he can do is puzzle over the prince’s words, utterly lost in how something so divine and golden could make anyone think of him and his shadowy nature.

Part 3:

The eleventh time Thanatos is waiting for Zag. 

Called to Hades’ halls on business, but willing to linger if it means seeing Zag just a little less bloody and beaten.

And as usual the prince does not disappoint. He strides into the master’s chambers, his hair and clothes dripping the strange iridescent liquid of Styx, sighing in frustration at his fate. The river’s red rivulets evaporate from his body and reveal him, warm glowy-grey skin, dark flyaway hair, and clear piercing eyes-- free from all the strange altering enchantments of his last escape. Clean, bare, utterly and unapologetically himself. Thanatos gives a weak shiver at the sight.

Zagreus strides straight up to his father, who mutters some small insult beneath his breath at the boy, which is returned with straight forward censure. Both so alike, yet wholly unwilling to see it.

Thanatos lets Zag have his moment with his father, scowl melting away when his clashing eyes settle on Thanatos across the room.

“And here you come” Thanatos says as the prince approaches him, amusement dancing around his mouth and threatening to pull it up into a smile.

“I see this time you’re seeking me out. To what do I owe the pleasure Than?” The prince asks grinning back with ease.

“Nothing much, your father required my presence and I thought I might wait to meet you. I heard that you still frequent these halls when you’re not trying to get yourself killed” Thanatos is relaxed, at ease in his monotone. The anger and hurt from the first few encounters with the prince almost completely forgotten in the two’s challenges and conversations since.

“I was never very good at staying alive, you know that” Zagreus’s cool and elegant voice gives out a small chuckle at his own words. And his sharp cleverness both amuses and crushes the god of death’s un-beating heart. Thanatos can’t bring himself to offer a response. Instead his lips give a small faint twitch upwards at the words, and he glances down, but the prince of the underworld doesn’t let him sit in discomfort, instead he smiles “What would you recommend I do? What boon would you give me my dear lord for this condition?”

 _My dear lord…?_ Thanatos wonders briefly looking back up into Zag’s amused inky-scarlet and chartreuse eyes.

What would he give indeed. This question has eaten away at him for lifetimes, and even more now with the prince offering him more golden glowing bottles every time they meet. What could he possibly do to bind this unruly and gorgeous mess of a man to him? To settle his own power within those haunting disparate eyes and bleeding immortal bones. To make him _stay, stay and choose me._ He feels a trembling shiver run down his spine and settle somewhere alongside his quiet heart.

But he knows that isn’t the response Zagreus is looking for. He decides a partial truth is the best help he can offer, “I feel that’s supposed to your field of expertise. The only thing I can recommend for your ailment is more practice.” Thanatos speaks with his effortless clear confidence, trying to play back the prince’s humorous tone.

Zagreus’s response is instant, “Practice you say? Well then it seems you’ve been helping me survive all along.” Thanatos isn’t exactly sure what that comment means either, but by now he’s used to Zag’s illogical and cryptic whit. For someone so analytical and precise, he has never had an easy time reading the son of Hades. Zagreus raises that same favorite dark eyebrow, “Why don’t we go now?”

Thanatos is lost, he feels his white eyebrows furrow together “Go where?”

Zagreus lowers his eyebrow and quirks his bow mouth into a closed lip grin “Practice of course.”

Ø Ø Ø Ø

“Still think you can deal death faster than I?” Thanatos asks from his hovering position above the fallen prince. Skelly waits, ready as always, for either the two to hit him or call him over to their spar.

Zagreus huffs out a soft laugh at the familiar words, “Only to myself” He looks up at Thanatos from his position on the floor, “well… Perhaps not.” He cocks his head to the left, spiky dark hair falling over the left side of his face for once and making Thanatos remember all too well just whose son he had knocked to the ground, and extends his flushed hand for Thanatos to take. “Help me up won’t you Than? It’s really the least you can do.”

Thanatos immediately begins moving to take the prince’s extended hand, but slows as his dark fingertips nearly touch the pale awaiting grasp. They haven’t held hands for so long, all of the sudden Thanatos is not sure he knows how to anymore. It was never effortless for him to hold the hand of someone so _alive,_ but as a child he didn’t have to also feel this slow smoldering sensation in his chest. Part of him feels like touching the prince will make him burst into flames, or worse, send Zagreus straight back to bathe in the Styx.

Zagreus takes no notice of the other god’s hesitance and surges his own hand forward into Thanatos’s cold palm lifting himself up all in one fluid motion. And his hand is so warm, so _alive_ in the grip of death’s. Thanatos feels a traitorous heat flare up his arm from the prince’s contact. _He’s burning me._ He thinks to himself, not realizing that Zagreus is already standing up now, still holding his mocha hand.

But the touch has given him confidence. And when Zagreus’s questioning glance meets his, Thanatos doesn’t let go or shy away. Not this time. He returns The prince’s gaze fully and strongly.

The confusion smooths from Zagreus’s chiseled and open face, and his dark lashes lower slightly over his enigmatic eyes. Equally as puzzling and fascinating to the god of death as the rest of his contradicting form. And in a moment of strange but slow confidence Thanatos brings his other hand up to cup his warm cheek.

“Zagreus” he breathes at the scorching contact. His body feels indefensible and fluttery at the closeness of the other man. And the sensation is terrifying, but he cannot let go nor move from this spot. He feels the blood pulsing beneath the dusty skin, the rushing beats and infinite _energy_ of the prince’s body, the tireless efforts of the small muscle within his rising and falling chest that is constantly fighting alongside its owner to survive. It humbles him in place, what right could he possibly have to stop such a vigorous and doomed existence? To bind this fluttering delicate muscle to the beatless, bloodless flesh within himself? Exchange its miracle for an eternity of silence.

Zagreus’s heart, just like the rest of him, is beautiful.

Thanatos moves his hand from the prince’s smooth cheek to brush a few raven tufts gently behind a rosy ear.

Zagreus seems to study Thanatos with the same quiet care, his eyes flick around the god’s face, never settling on any feature for long. Almost as if he’s searching, just as desperately as he tries to escape, for an answer in the silvery hair and ashy umber face before him.

“Zagreus, I—” Thanatos starts again, not even sure what he’s going to say before his words die, silenced by a desperate blaze of sensation as Zagreus crushes his lips to the dead god’s. Fire ignites into Thanatos’s empty veins, and strong warm arms close around him pulling him deeper into the scorching heat of Zagreus. His eyes widen slightly and then press shut as the lifeless core of his chest squeezes and tenses with ecstasy.

Zagreus breaks for a breath, eyelids lifting to reveal glazed green and red and black and Thanatos, no longer shy and patient, immediately pulls his flushed lips back, diving willingly into that heat, hungrily devouring the virility of the bleeding god. He bites down on the prince’s soft lips, and consumes the shocked gasp of that silky voice alongside the slight iron taste of his divine blood. And he feels _alive_ , humming with hunger, want, adoration, need.

Their hands are still clasped together, serving as a strange binding between them. Zagreus slides his other hand into the ivory of Thanatos’s hair and Thanatos groans softly at the pull of his strong fingers, pressing his own free palm to the prince’s firm chest.

All it takes is a second of the pulsing vibrations from Zag’s hammering heart and immediately his eyes shoot open, he breaks the grip on Zagreus’s hand and pushes the prince from his body. The spell is broken. Zagreus stands flushed, breathing hard, his lip bleeding a little from where Thanatos bit him, his eyes holding a pain that is usually only reserved for Hades himself.

And Thanatos can’t look anymore, he utters a bewildered “I-I have to go” before vanishing from the wounded prince and weapon chamber, disappearing into the labyrinth of the underworld, far as he can get from the house of Hades.

He knows what scared him, the sudden awareness that he was in love, completely fallen and at the mercy of this man who he grew up with, who he watched die time and time again, _how did he let him die like that for so long?_ Then pressing his hand to Zagreus, only to feel that fragile heart thundering so fast within his chest. The heart of the one he loved, destroying itself for him. Pulsing so fast, because of him. _I won’t let him die for me._

His chest feels crunched with longing and cold. How odd that love should be found in such a dark place, and how fitting for the god of death that he could never again act upon it.

Part 4:

The seventeenth time Thanatos seeks him out.

After their sparring match the god of death doesn’t come to Hades’s house. He keeps his distance in the dead fields of Elysium and waits for the prince to come to him to practice. And after they practice, he offers his gift, and leaves. Unwilling to trust himself alone and idle with Zagreus’s wry and bewitching eyes.

He pushes his feelings down, tells himself the twisting of his core is nothing more than a distraction, it’ll pass with time. Everything eventually does.

But then Zagreus stops finding him. Rumors and tales of the doomed prince’s last few escape attempts being utterly pitiful and disappointing reach Thanatos through the maze of the shadowy underworld’s inhabitants.

And at first it’s easy to ignore, to throw himself into his work wholeheartedly. _After all, death is nothing if not consistent. Zagreus will pick himself back up again and fight his way to Thanatos in time, or not._

But concern and unease on behalf of his friend, his prince, gnaw away at him. Eventually the quiet of the realm no longer feels safe, but rather terrifying. Void, colorless, and so so cold, and in a moment of weakness Thanatos decides to seek out some light.

He does uncover him, after descending chamber upon chamber of hostile crystals and undiscovered gifts, he finds his prince, down in the fires of Asphodel, throwing his body recklessly at wretches and running across the fires of hell with abandon. Behind him a vortex of purple haze and mist swirls, clouding the prince and poisoning the naturally stagnant, dry air with humid sweets and bitter finish. And before Thanatos can get past the thick heavenly fog he hears an echoing puncture that pierces even him down to his core.

_No._

The god rushes into the quickly dissipating fog to the leaking body. Burns marks have scorched through the soles of Zagreus’s feet, and his chest rises in shallow sporadic movements as the deep crimson liquid puddles around his body, soaking through his already red clothes, and seeping into his inky hair. The puncture in his chest edged with purple-y red angry veins.

Thanatos doesn’t know what to do. He feels _useless_ , _powerless_ to stop the blood and help the fallen prince. Zagreus coughs harshly, spitting up more of his own red energy and breathes a little faster before opening his eyes.

“Zag… Zag please” Thanatos utters, unable to find any other words. The prince’s cloudy eyes widen and he strains his neck side to side until he’s looking softly and drunkenly into Thanatos’s eyes. His thin, and blood-smeared bluing lips lift at the corners, and his peacefully glazed eyes blink softly at the greyscale god.

“Than, you came to me” he laughs out weakly, still fighting to draw in any breaths at all. “After all the effort I put into coming to you, you came to me.” The words are slurred and unsteady, and with them comes a cloud of alcohol. The prince seems to find this whole situation extremely amusing as he hacks out blood and laughs. “You know, you’re a little late friend. Why you missed all the fun!” He muses himself further, closing his mouth and eyes now to slightly breathe staccato huffs that start on an intoxicated smile and end on a wince.

Thanatos has seen him under the god’s influence many times. Visits where Zagreus’s weapon and lips glow with crimson bloodlust scary enough to tear apart death himself, encounters where his dark hair dances enchanted by waves only influencing him calm and cool, smiles and words that drip with lust, send a pink hue through his skin and thrust Thanatos into a confused fit of tainted weakness.

But in all those cases he was still himself. Still controlled by Zagreus. Never consumed by the god’s will and power. Never like this.

“What have you done to yourself you fool?” Thanatos asks surprisingly calm for one caught on the threshold of screaming and crying. The purple mists and delirium hum through the prince’s body, even seem to stain his blood with their toxically sweet scent and deep violet hue.

Zagreus laughs his painful stuttering hack again and sucks in three breaths before chuckling once more, “Remember, I told you, I never was very good at staying alive… I thought, may as well enjoy it.”

It’s all wrong. The clouds in his viridian eye, the careless tone, the lazy smile and hacking feverish laughs. It’s all wrong and it angers Thanatos. _Why can’t he be more careful? Why can’t he try harder? Why can’t I help?_ The words flash through his mind and he falls back on his legs defeated before the dying, giggling prince. The blood around the prince feels as if it’s draining from him as well, weakening him with each ripple, pulling the strength from his body till there’s nothing left.

_Is this what death feels like?_

“H-Hey Than?” Zagreus asks, chuckles dissipating slightly from his speech. He breathes in deeply as he can, mustering strength to say something to the deathly god kneeling beside him in his blood. “Can I ask you something?”

Thanatos perks up a little, breaking out slightly from his crushed chest and fallen face. _I just wanted to see him._ “Yes?” he asks softly, afraid that his voice might be the final blow that pulls Zagreus from his side.

“Will you hold my hand?” He murmurs weakly, fingers twitching in the lukewarm fluid beside him, “it’s taking longer than usual this time.”

Thanatos says nothing, he has no words. He slowly lifts his fingers, and grasps, gentle at first, then firmer at the unfamiliar cold in the familiar hand, as if he could squeeze it away and ignite the heat he once felt beneath that ash skin. His ever confounding core tightens impossibly more, and locks his hand in place, clutching at the withering flesh and bone of Zagreus. And all he can think of is how alive this hand felt the last time he held it, how strong and powerful the pulse beating against his wrist was. How wrongly quiet and frail it is now. “Yeah, that’s good” Zagreus smiles, his long dark lashes fluttering shut over the fuzzy irises. He lets out a sigh, his chest rising even less now, blood slowing in its pool around he and Thanatos, face draining and hollowing into alabaster flesh.

Thanatos struggles, but finds a few words he has to ask, “Why did you do it?” Why put his body under such heavy influence? Was the underworld truly so unbearable for him? Would Thanatos ever be able to understand?

Zagreus doesn’t open his eyes, doesn’t twitch in his hand, lift his eyebrow, nor cough out any further breaths. He whispers, softly and faintly in halting slow words “Sometimes. It’s so hard, to reach. You”

As he speaks Thanatos studies his form eyes sweeping slowly over the fading wine enchantments, and then he spots a familiar gilded butterfly, pinned to the tattered and blood soaked robe.

Then he’s gone.

Final Part:

The last time he sees Zagreus is sickeningly tender.

Once again in the fields of Elysium he waits, tending to his deaths, when the chamber shifts and in enters the prince.

Thanatos is used to the change in atmosphere the prince of blood and life brings to the underworld by now. Even hungry for it, longing in the shadows for the not quite light but not darkness of the boy.

And this time when Zagreus walks to him, just as he’s about to offer his challenge, the prince holds up his hand, halting his words. It’s Thanatos’s turn this time to raise an eyebrow at the firm and serious gesture.  
“Let’s not have games today” Zagreus grins before melting back into a more serious face “I’m leaving Than.” And there’s a confidence, a resolve Thanatos has never seen or heard before in the honey smooth voice and dissimilar eyes. He knows this is the last time, Zagreus is escaping.

Thanatos’s gaze drops to the azure and dead grass beneath his hovering feet, he has no energy to stop him, he never did. But that doesn’t stop the now all too familiar twinge and jab of pain in his chest.

He settles his mind for Zag’s sake, “I understand.” And begins to turn away from the prince, relinquishing the entrance to the next chamber without their usual dance. He’s sure Zagreus needs not his distraction, nor his help to make it this far so clean and unbattered. But a warm hand reach out, and clasps his cool wrist in its softly rumbling heat. Thanatos closes his eyes briefly at the sensation, body trilling lightly with the touch. _Have I always been so weak? I guess I have._ He opens his eyes and turns back to Zagreus’s determined face. 

“Come with me.” He says. Straightforward and simple. No farce or clever whit, just a simple request.

_Simply impossible._

“You know I cannot” Thanatos says, he casts his eyes down, but doesn’t pull his wrist.

“No I don’t.” Says Zagreus, still gazing at him with conviction and firm resolve. “I know where I belong Thanatos. And it’s not the heavens of Olympus, nor the depths of the underworld. It’s out there, amidst the life and death of the Earth, the cycle of it all going on forever, day and night. And you belong there too, with me.” His words are so clear, so confident on his rose lips. Thanatos stares at them, wants to believe them, but how can he. The surface has only every hurt his eyes, hurt his heart. How could he, a creature borne from darkness herself belong in such a bright place? Furthermore Zagreus doesn’t understand. The Earth is no place for the living either, only those caught between life and death, neither one of them belongs.

But he won’t stop him anymore, as much as Thanatos can’t bear to lose the color of Zagreus, to condemn him to a life of darkness would be even worse. “I cannot go, the Earth is no home for me.”

Zagreus huffs out an exasperated breath and grips Thanatos’s face firmly in his strong hands, “I cannot do this anymore Thanatos. You must know that I feel for you, what I feel for you. I know you feel it too. I will not be without you, and I will not be bound here. You are a being of free-will. There is nowhere in all of creation where death doesn’t have a home” his fierce words cuts through Thanatos’s sulky mood and he stares wide eyed back into the prince’s eyes, transfixed by his words and strength, unable to utter a sound. Zagreus continues to stare him down and challenge, but Thanatos offers no argument. He knows he wants this life, wants a life with this man, no matter what it takes. Zagreus’s eyes soften and glance down to Than’s lips quickly and back up. “Thanatos, “ he starts now gently, hesitantly, “I don’t want to trap you, I know how that feels, and I can’t do that to you. Do you remember when I kissed you? After our practice? You’re so hard to read sometimes, I had no idea what you felt until that moment, but I decided to risk it. You know me, I’m not one for sitting still.” He smiles a little before continuing in his persistent tone, “And, when” he breathes out hotly against Thanatos, who in return feels an ache in his chest at the memory, “When you kissed me back, and pulled me to you I felt so alive, just on the edge of life and death, waiting to see which side I’d land on but wishing to tread between them forever, between them with you.” He pauses to close his eyes briefly and settle his emotions, “But you pulled away. Why did you pull away from me?” there’s a sorrow that seeps into his tone towards the end. The two of them never unpacked that moment, choosing instead to bury it under their conversations and games. Forgotten in the memoryless Skelly and decaying walls.

But now, it’s all too much, and Thanatos is overflowing with feeling, “I was afraid!” The words rush out of him in more energy than his voice has ever held, “I know what it is for others to die, how fragile beating bodies are, and I couldn’t kill you. I wouldn’t bring death to you, _it would end me Zagreus!”_ His voice is a monotone trembling mess, his face contorting in pain alongside the pricks and shivers in his chest. “You have no idea, no idea how long I have watched you, wanted to hold you in my arms, make you care for me, breathe for me, _live and die for me_ , and then… When you were finally there, in my control, willing to let it all go for me I couldn’t bear it.” Darkness and deepness seeps into his voice as he recalls the carnal hunger he had, still has, for the prince. He pauses to regain his control, willing down his twinging core, “I would consume you, I _will_ consume you Zagreus. There is nothing death does not eventually take.” Those last words are soft, his controlled and serene voice returning with the honesty of the phrase.

Zagreus laughs, honest and mischievous. It does nothing to quell Thanatos’s turmoil, until he murmurs, “Don’t you see, you already have me, I own nothing of myself.” Thanatos stops hovering, drops his feet to stand on ground with Zagreus. And looks slightly down into his eyes, his jaw tense and set strong, “Come with me Thanatos, take everything I am, it’s already all yours.”

He is so beautiful, Thanatos takes a moment to really, _really_ look at him. Pulsing with the gifts of various gods, but beneath it all the boy he knows. A boy of blood and violence, whit and charm, same as him, bound to this realm by fate, but not force. The boy he grew up with, the boy with inky black hair covering his heaven and hell eyes he watched and fell hopelessly in love with all those lives ago. _What have you done to me?_

The god of death parts his lips, searching for other arguments but finding none.

He pretended for so long to love the underworld, but in the days separated from Zagreus the darkness only brought sadness and gloom, equally dreary to the blinding light of the world above. _The only time I feel at ease, comforted and right…_ He remembers watching Zagreus die in that swirl of lilac mist and deep scarlet blood, watching Zagreus reborn and shaking himself off from the water of the Styx, time and time again, he imagines the place where he is no longer condemned to such a pitiful cycle. No longer influenced by the gods of heaven or hell.

He had been fighting against being with Zagreus for so long. _His entire life, really_.

“Okay.” He whispers before closing his lips over the blushed waiting mouth of his love, consuming them down just as he promised he would. And all his latent violence, anger, sadness, calculation, melts away. He gives in to his fluttering, defective heart, letting it finally press him closer to the life-given god. Zagreus huffs out a breath against Thanatos’s lips, and utters a weak sound that crumbles any doubts left in his overly analytical mind. The feel of him, humming with life pulls Thanatos in, there is no escape for him. He knows that he, too, does not own anything of himself.

He feels Zagreus place and press a firm warm pulsing hand against his silent chest. The gesture sends an intense stab of emotion through him and he presses his own palm back against the prince’s cloak, through the familiar frozen butterfly and to his thundering chest, beating fast and strong enough for both of them.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes I too wish it was more sexy but I'm not a sexy person :/ Write your own sexy part if you like.  
> I own nothing, this is probably not official greek mythology accurate but believe what you want to :)
> 
> Yep that's it, byeeeeeee!


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